Hi there ladies and gents ..
He we were in California thinking that we had dodged several Weather Bullets but ....We finally got the rainfall equivalent of the recent Snowmegeddon that most of the country experienced over Christmas !!
In this beautiful valley of Redwoods and Oaks just across the Golden Gate Bridge , North side of the GG , we got 9 inches of rain in a couple of days !! That would be almost 2 years worth of rain here in the Bay Area around the GG !! This little town ( Fairfax area) and the hills have escaped major damage . Preparation by the local authorities and the Cal Parks Dept have been very , very effective in preventing damage and deaths . The beautiful little coastal towns and vacation beaches have been wiped out in many cases . All the places I visited with Kitty have been very badly hit , Santa Cruz, Capitola especially .
Billions of gallons of water have fallen on parched , hard soil , desert and bone dry forests in the past two weeks and much of that water flows off into rivers and flood canals , eventually the Pacific . After a drought the ground is so compacted and hard that not much of the falling water will soak into the ground to fill the almost empty Natural Aquifers such as in the Central Valley in California . In this area the whole valley has dropped in elevation because the ground shrinks as more and more water is removed from the valley . The Irrigation water sprayed on the land normally flows away from the Valley and ends up in the Salton Sea and many lakes of poison water ( pesticides , salts ) . Very little of the irrigation water will sink back into the Natural Aquifer .
As I watch all this Free Water falling from the sky I think ...What a waste of natural resouces that we periodically get from Mother Nature totall free of charge !! The Gas Fracking outfits pump their poisoned waste water back into the wells they drill saying that natural filtration will clean it as it flows back into the Aquifers ??? I imagine that at some point the powers that be in California , Arizona etc will figure out that all this water that is causing flooding and destruction over the whole West Coast could be funneled back into the Natural Aqufers that exist but are almost depleted by overuse !! I know this could be done if some smart Geologists put their heads together and Governments just thought about it for five minutes !!
Here in this Redwood valley most people run their "Grey Water" out into their gardens and distribute it on the property . The State encourages this as every drop saved is a Drop not removed from the system . The shower , kitchen sink , bathroom etc ( non contaminated ) water is watering the area around the house . This keeps the plants green all year and helps to protect houses from burning embers blown into gardens ( burning embers travel 9 or ten miles !!) Because Green plants are more difficult to burn . In the Bay Area all the street water and cleaned sewer water flows out into the Bay or out into the Pacific through an outfall tunnel underneath Highway 1 in SF . The outfall pipes run for miles under the beach and out for miles into the Pacific Ocean ....what a waste in a State plagued by permanent Drought !! Billions of gallons of valuable water wasted as the Aquifers are emptied daily .
If homeowners can do their bit then the State can give it a shot !! Put the water back into the ground and not into the Ocean , seems to make sense to me ! ? Magoo .☘🌞
Hope everyone has a Great New Year ...💚
